Shmooze with Inara Tabir: Space Exploration as a Pro-Human Endeavor

Summary

In this conversation, Jacob Sager and Inara Tabir discuss the impact of the Great American Eclipse and the growing interest in space among the general public. They explore the current landscape of the space industry and the shift towards private exploration and migration. They also discuss the importance of effective communication and messaging to engage the public in space-related initiatives. Inara shares her perspective on the future of space exploration and settlement, emphasizing the need for a pro-human stance and the involvement of diverse communities. They also touch on the role of science fiction in inspiring and shaping the future of space exploration, as well as the importance of respectful language and relationships with AI and traditional cultures. Finally, they discuss the potential political shifts that may occur as humanity expands into space and the exciting experiments and projects happening in the space industry. The conversation explores the need for collaboration and a holistic approach in the space industry. It emphasizes the importance of thinking civilizationally and working together to build a future in space. The education system is identified as a weak point, and the need for alternative educational programs and after-school initiatives is highlighted. The conversation also delves into the concept of the overview effect and other philosophies that can increase awareness and desire to participate in the space age. The application of AI for cultural preservation and knowledge sharing is discussed, as well as the importance of embracing one’s unique perspective and bringing it to the table. The conversation concludes with a discussion on the items the guest would bring from Earth when going to space, including the traveling trans flag and her foster care record.

Takeaways

• The Great American Eclipse generated significant interest in space among the general public, highlighting the need for effective communication and messaging to engage and educate the public about space-related initiatives.
• The space industry is experiencing a shift towards private exploration and migration, with a growing realization that the industry needs to involve and gain support from the public. This shift requires a different approach to communication and engagement compared to the Cold War era.
• Space exploration and settlement offer opportunities for diverse communities to participate and contribute. It is important to have a pro-human stance and to respect and include traditional cultures in the conversation.
• Science fiction plays a crucial role in inspiring and shaping the future of space exploration. It serves as a blueprint for a better path forward and helps people envision the possibilities of space.
• Respectful language and relationships with AI are important, regardless of whether AI becomes sentient. It is about who we are as individuals and how we treat others, including non-human entities.
• As humanity expands into space, there may be political shifts and experiments in governance. The potential for a libertarian spreading of political systems and the need for global cooperation and alignment are important considerations.
• The space industry is filled with exciting experiments and projects that are pushing the boundaries of what is possible. These projects range from political experiments to technological advancements and cultural initiatives. The space industry needs collaboration and a holistic approach to build a future in space.
• The education system in the space industry needs improvement, and alternative educational programs can supplement traditional education.
• The overview effect and other philosophies can increase awareness and desire to participate in the space age.
• AI can be used for cultural preservation and knowledge sharing.
• Embrace your unique perspective and bring it to the table.
• Items of personal significance can be brought from Earth when going to space.

Chapters

00:00 The Excitement and Impact of the Eclipse Experience
07:31 The Influence of Entertainment and Storytelling on Space Exploration
14:48 The Importance of Respectful Language in Interacting with AI
43:07 The Impact of the Overview Effect and Other Philosophies
54:46 Space Reading Recommendations
01:02:47 Bringing Earth to Space

Transcript

Inara Episode

[00:00:03] Jacob Sager: Welcome to space Midrash where Jewish thought meets the final frontier. Space being this awe-filled cosmos that’s just begging us to come and know it. To be greater through it. And Midrash the Jewish process of drawing from the past, standing in the present and creating a narrative richer, more inclusive than our ancestors could have imagined. I’m your host, Jacob Sager, inviting you to join me on this journey. Where every episode is an opportunity to expand our understanding, connect across generations and shape a future that honors our heritage while boldly stepping into the unknown. I believe in an artful humanity, ethically thriving throughout the universe, but we will only become those people.

If we can tell the story of us becoming those people.

Honored to have had Inara Tabir on this episode because she is authentic and has a pro human pro future perspective. Which has come to blend, heritage entertainment and industry into real communities, projects, and happenings in our current moment of the space age. I know Inara from, the overview round table, where she welcomes lots of brilliant other folks into the community connecting all of us. Our conversation together on space Midrash, delightfully explores many ideas from the words we use to describe the space, age to the words we use when interacting with AI. We discussed futurism and how not to other enduring cultural heritage is when trying to bring us all forward into something greater. She brings in some Rabinnic wisdom spun into great advice to all of us wanting to get in on space , but are plagued by our own imposter syndrome. In the space, Midrash fashion I closed by asking Inara, which she’d bring to space. Her twofold answer is an inclusive and exciting future that she is leading. It’s the kind of space, age leadership we value here on space Midrash. This conversation was as deep as it was wide and we’ll hopefully be the first of many

This is space, mid trash schmooze with Inara Tabi. Space exploration as a pro human endeavor.

[00:02:46] Jacob Sager: And I’m here with Inara Tabir on Space Madrash. We’re talking today, it is the Friday after the Great American Eclipse from April 8th, 2024. So that’s a very exciting thing. And you came stateside for the eclipse. So I want to ask you, we’ll just start there. How was your Eclipse experience?

[00:03:07] Inara Tabir: So I did, and I have to maybe present a bummer here, but I came for the Eclipse.

There were some logistics problems. I wasn’t able to get to the Path of Totality. I was scheduled to speak, but then life stuff happened, so I ended up catching a partial one from Utah. But I hear it was amazing in the Totality. I’m really excited. Even though I wasn’t on site, I’m excited to see how much attention there was from outside the industry.

I feel like this may have been one of the biggest times that the public Has been really into it.

[00:03:36] Speaker: Have you been in totality before, or have you had an eclipse before?

[00:03:42] Inara Tabir: I haven’t. So I’ve done eclipses. I’ve never been in the path of totality, but I’m planning on it for Spain. The next one in Spain, I’m definitely going to be there.

[00:03:48] Jacob Sager: Yeah, I think it’s something as well that will inspire a lot of people outside of the space community, particularly how many million Americans were just in the path of totality with no choice.

[00:04:01] Inara Tabir: Yeah, I think it’s great marketing because often times it’s so difficult to get the public excited about space because it seems so far away to them and it seems irrelevant to their daily lives and we’re often trying to make these pitches of, please care about space because we did this thing for you like cell phones or Velcro or, or we get some people that are a little bit more into it.

And we’ll be like, Oh, space is this great thing. And, but with something like an eclipse, you can’t ignore it. So everyone gets invested. And I think it’s one of those times where the average person realizes earth is really in space and is impacted by it. So it’s very visceral, physical, visible way to help them fill that connection they don’t normally fill.

[00:04:36] Jacob Sager: What’s the current landscape of the space industries and adjacent and non adjacent cultural communities?

[00:04:44] Inara Tabir: I would say at this point, we’re at the cusp of the real migratory period in the space as I like to call it. We look at the Apollo era, and the relationship we had with the public was very much a national defense posture.

It was very much about the Cold War, and so that was the way we related to the public. But now we’re in this age where space is becoming its own kind of individual pursuit. And I think that the industry realizes they have a different job to do when it comes to the public with communication. Before it was, don’t talk to the public.

We curate that message. This is about national defense. And we’ve, I think we’ve had a big deficit in communication because of that. And now the industry has shifted more to the private exploratory and migratory industry, and they’re realizing we need the public. We do have to get them on board. It’s not just about who your customer is.

It’s about the zeitgeist and shifting that zeitgeist.

[00:05:31] Jacob Sager: How has that, you say that we’re in this migratory era. How, like, where are we standing in that migratory era? How is that different than the year 2000? And how is that different from the year 2040?

[00:05:45] Inara Tabir: Absolutely. That’s an amazing question. Thank you.

I think, we look at Apollo era and it was all about beating the Russians and building out that initial tech and making those first steps. And then we’re looking at, around the year 2000, 2005, it’s all about changing the technology and being able to do it better, and also shifting it from full government control to private control more and building that bridge and creating those pathways.

And now, I’d say we’re fully into the realm of, yes, there’s a private space industry. I can remember several very high level people not that long ago saying things like, Private space will never happen. It’s just not possible. It’s too expensive, but now there is no doubt that we are in a very stable private industry for space.

And I think now we can, instead of saying, can we do it? Now we’re asking questions like, why should we do it? How should we do it? And we’re looking at people leaving very, powerful positions in automotive and the oil industry, the energy sector. They’re either leaving and coming into space or they’re building out a space strategy.

And really, I would say there isn’t an industry today that will survive if they don’t have a space strategy. So for me, it’s like we’re already prepping for that migration into space by shifting the way we do things now.

[00:06:49] Jacob Sager: Let me ask you. Compared to the Apollo era, where I guess everything else that people experience technologically worldwide has been exponentially increasing on a very visceral level, the difference between gathering around the TV to watch the moon landing versus, everyone pulling out their moon landing debunking video on their phone whereas space has had a lot of starts and stops, or at least To the public perspective, it feels like that definitely with the end of the shuttle program 15 years ago and the end of the Apollo program in the early seventies, I’m curious if you think that those stops have created any issues in the public’s bigger perception of space industries and the possibility of the migratory era, as you call it.

[00:07:38] Inara Tabir: Absolutely. I think we have to start with the fact that the public doesn’t believe in us, and I’ll say that very plainly, very directly. They don’t believe in us for the most part, and we have that issue there, and it does go back to the messaging. And we see things like if the automotive industry crashes a, a Mercedes Benz into a wall to safety test it, No one ever says it’s a failure.

But if we, if SpaceX blows up a rocket a rocket that’s supposed to transport humans to Mars one day, if they blow it up, it’s a big failure in the public’s eye. And we know it’s not a failure. This is part of the process. As someone who wants to be on that rocket to Mars one day, Please blow up as many as you have to make sure that end product is as good as it can be.

So we have that issue where they see the rockets exploding as a failure. They see the expense attached to the rocket industry, and they’ll say things like, Why are you spending all this money on space when you could be spending it on fixing ecological distress, or ethnic conflict, or the environment, or anything that they care about deeply.

But they never ask Hollywood, who spends 600 billion a year, why they’re not spending the money on those things, because they don’t really see And a separation there. So they have the established religions, basically, I call them, of humanity. Of entertainment, and booze, and sports. These things that we spend lots of money on.

And these things don’t necessarily have to do anything humanitarian. But, and no one questions it. So we need to connect with them. And that, those gaps. Like when we see things, we’re promised in the 70s. We have the orphans of Apollo. We’re promised in the 70s and 80s. This future in space.

And then it doesn’t happen. And then we’re hitching rides with the Russians. I really do believe that from Challenger basically on, we started gradually and then very quickly losing faith with our populace, but it’s starting to change. I think as much as we do have those people that will naysay we started with the kind of the rocket explosions from SpaceX, which were covered really well.

And then you started getting people excited about it. I think it takes a fire and explosion sometimes. And it became a popular thing once again. So while we do have those gaps that have, we’ve lost credibility with a lot of people, and we do have that messaging issue, I think we’re seeing more and more, especially over the last five years, this gaining ground with the public.

[00:09:35] Jacob Sager: Let me ask you this. How does being in the space industries , or at least even just believing in, the migratory era or in the space age? How does that impact one’s relation to their earthly or non futurist communities?

[00:09:52] Inara Tabir: I’ve never been to space. I haven’t been to space yet.

Working on it at the moment, but I’ve, I’ve seen people come back from space and you can see how touched they are. We call it the overview effect. William Shatner might be one of the best examples where, he comes down and he’s just Sobbing and he’s emotionally scattered and he’s just, in awe, terrible awe of that moment when he realized the earth is this tiny, fragile place that there’s this great blackness out there and there’s this tiny little bubble of life and, I believe that changes you and I haven’t been yet but still contemplating that, thinking about it.

Making space my focus every day, I’m really thankful for the little things that are the big things, the fact that we have sunlight, we have oxygen, we have gravity, we have this amazing species that can do these great things. And I think that when you contemplate these great big things like the void of space, then everything else starts to become crisper in a sense, if that makes any sense.

And you also start thinking, you may still have your ethnic or national or cultural identity. Your neighborhood, but you, then you start thinking about things globally. How does the global world work? And you’re more tuned into the way that global world cycles and changes. And getting us into space, we’re going to need that cooperative kind of model.

So I think, as a spacer, I do tend to look at the world as a unit. It’s a system that’s engineering this path forward.

[00:11:07] Jacob Sager: I’ve heard you use the terms multi planetary and cosmo sapien. What do those terms mean and why do they matter?

[00:11:19] Inara Tabir: Yeah, thank you. Multiplanetary was really important to me. When we were putting together the Multiplanetary Society, we went through lots of different names and ideas and the ways of communicating what we were trying to do.

And the website’s down right now. It’s being rebuilt. But on the website, we talk about the fact that this isn’t just about planets. That we would like to see people settling in space stations, on asteroids, on, generational ships through the cosmos. So it’s not just planets, but we wanted to use the term multiplanetary specifically because The other side of the messaging has been, this is our only home, this planet is our only home.

And I think that’s, it’s in one sense it’s accurate, in another sense it’s very inaccurate and dangerous, because we start to think of it as this separate system. The planet becomes this big focus, and people start making this dichotomy of this planet or everything else. And so when we talked about multi planetary, we created this term multi planetary, or started to use it, it was just a way of breaking out of the idea of one planet.

But there were these other systems out there that we can settle and really, we talk about habitability and we talk about the Goldilocks zone and oftentimes the great search is for that planet that’s just like Earth, perfectly made for us. And really, when we’re settling on this planet, we don’t do that.

We don’t look at the trek to Antarctica to build a base and say it needs to be like Key West. That’s our goal. Let’s find Key West in Antarctica. What we say is that’s going to be hard. What can we do to make this work? And so I think I want to shift that mentality to that sense of habitability and the ability to migrate isn’t about finding the perfect spot.

It’s about creating the perfect conditions. And that’s on us. So that’s where the multi planetary term comes from.

And then Cosmosapiens is really I see. There used to be this struggle between Earth versus Moon, and there still is, to a certain degree, of should we go to the Moon first, should we go to Mars first, should we only go to the Moon, and it has been the sticking point in the industry between different parties, but the same thing happens when we talk about, going to space or not.

For instance, Bill Nye is not in favor of humans going into space. He says it’s dangerous and terrible and we should stay here where it’s nice and send robots, and that’s one view and that’s valid for his, organization, but for me, we need to get out there, and I don’t think everyone’s going to be made for that.

Some people are going to be willing to go to space when it’s comfortable. Some will never be willing to go, and that’s fine. But there are a certain group of people I call Cosmosapiens. And that’s those of us who are like, Okay, the rocket has a 75 percent chance of blowing up. We might have enough oxygen on Mars.

The settlement might be set up. Let’s go. I’m ready. These are the kind of the first through the door kind of people. Space is calling to us every single day. We give everything we can to it, and so that’s just my way of pulling that tribe together.

[00:13:44] Jacob Sager: What is the multi planetary society?

[00:13:48] Inara Tabir: So the multi planetary society exists to help build a very pro human stance on space. I see, there’s a lot of people out there that will take an environmental stance that’s very anti human. Too many humans, we’re a pariah, get rid of us, limit us.

And I wanted to first of all take a very pro human stance because I think it’s really important that, humans do great things and terrible things, but at the end of the day I want to see a hundred billion people out in the cosmos. Lots of people. We’re wonderful. But at the same time, let’s manage our resources properly.

Let’s see if we can do things better than we’ve done in the past. But also, it’s about Finding a way to settle space as quick as possible. I’m really worried that we’re going to have another orphan generation. We talk about going into space and then we get a little bit closer and then something shuts down.

So the multi planetary society takes a very bold statement and says, we’re going to be settling space by 2040. And by saying that we’re invoking the wrath of the potential wrath of fate there. But. We’re about pro human stance, we’re about pro space stance, but we’re also about just, saying, let’s get this done.

Kennedy said, we’re gonna do this by the end of the decade, and what we’re saying is, we’re gonna do it by 2040, and let’s play an active role in that. A couple different things I did with the organization, cause I, I work with a lot of non profits, a lot of space work companies and organizations, and I think that what happens is, you get A vision and a passion the first couple of years, and then oftentimes you get drift.

People come in willing to leverage their homes, willing to sacrifice their daily lives to make this happen for space. And then a couple of years in the funding isn’t coming in and the people around them just don’t get it. And it can get really grueling if you don’t have the funding. Something in you that pushes you, you’re gonna shut down.

By the second or third year, they’re selling t shirts to keep the lights on. They’re doing coloring contests. They’re trying to justify their existence by saying, Oh, we’re all about the environment. We shift to education and environment. And those things are important. And a lot of good space works do also cover those.

But I think when they shift that primary stance of like education and environment away from space, they’ve given up. So with Multiplanetary Society, we made a deal. That we will stay focused on settling space, and we talk about migration, exploration, and settlement, M E S. And then, we’re shutting down.

In 2040, we’ve either helped, in some big way, get humans to space, and we shut the org down, because it’s time to go build that civilization, or we failed. And we have it, and we shut the organization down so someone else can do a better job. But we made a commitment, we call it the Damocles Principle, to have a time length, a deadline basically, of the org gets to exist for this period of time, and then it’s done, no matter what happens.

And so it gives a certain sense of urgency, and a certain sense of focus, so we don’t get bogged down in trying to shift to coloring contests, or education, or environment. Those things can be involved, but space settlement has to be the focus.

[00:16:26] Jacob Sager: You, you bring up a lot of interesting things about a couple different scales coming to an intersection.

One is that the human population, in our lifetimes has increased a lot. My dad is in his late eighties I was looking at it with him. The world population grew, I think three or four times since he was born. And so I, I absolutely believe the same thing and want a solar system full of hundreds of billions of people.

And if, as we have the means or figure out to be a more interstellar to continue in that direction. But we have this interesting thing, which is both this exponential growth of human population and have a lot of the technologicalization of life. But the scale of certain things like migration.

Or the transformation in human civilization takes generations or takes other scales. So I feel like we’re at a certainly confusing time because of that. And maybe that is something that kind of turns people off or makes it hard for those who believe in space to communicate it or for the people who are just curious, but don’t know what, what everyone else is talking about.

So I’m curious what your thoughts are on that. And if there’s a way to maybe break through conceptually there.

[00:17:39] Inara Tabir: Absolutely. I was in a think tank years ago, and one of the big hot topics we revisited regularly was this idea of, do we convert? Or do we go with the people who get it, and, or is there some combination between that, and that idea was, do we work with the people who woke up hungry for space every day of their lives, and they get it, and they, you don’t have to convince them, and do we just work on bringing them all together and getting them to work together, or do we go out and try to convert the general public and get them to see the value, and, I’ve, depending on what time I am in my life, I’m one or the other, or I’m both, but I think it’s really important that the messaging be right.

And the messaging starts with the possibility. I’ve given talks all over the world. On huge stages, small ones, virtual, in person, and I’m almost every time, I’m never really shocked, I guess I am really shocked in a certain sense, but people come up to me and they’ll say, Oh, Space, it’s real? I thought this was a thousand years away.

I don’t know who is feeding this number to people, but I hear this so often. Isn’t that a thousand years away? And I’m like no, it’s now. We’re doing it now. And they, you have to convince them. You have to show them there are some real things happening. I showed them the technology that’s out.

The fact that SpaceX has revolutionized rocket boosters and the ability to have 33 rocket boosters and the fact that, he is going to fund this big movement into space, that people are providing the radiation shielding and the food and the water and all that. And then the fact that people are leaving big, powerful jobs to come into space, but whatever it is, we’ve tried different combinations.

Once they get it, once they know, oh, it’s real, this is happening, then the light goes on. And they’re like how do I be part of this? I had a guy come up after one of my talks, and he said, I didn’t realize it was happening now, this is so exciting, I’ve always been fascinated by space, but, I’m too old, I don’t have the right job, I just, I can’t be part of this, and I’m like The guy’s like 50.

He’s a programmer. I said you’re a programmer. We need you in space. There’s so many jobs for you out there. And I think the thing is that people. They don’t want to connect with something they don’t feel like they can participate in. We don’t want gods anymore. We’re not interested in looking off in the distance and seeing these powerful titans.

People want to play. They want to be involved. And it’s about showing them it’s real and showing them how they can participate in that. And that could be as simple as saying, Here’s a job course. Here’s a degree. Or, hey, you have this artistic skill. We need that in these seven organizations. And I think if every organization out there could get the messaging out that, we don’t just need rocket scientists.

And that we do need these other critical, amazing things. And Then that shift would happen.

[00:19:57] Jacob Sager: One thing I know that you’ve been part of in that shift is connecting and building bridges between entertainment and industry and entertainment and community at large. And I feel that I’ve even heard you say that before you got into that you weren’t really even into Star Trek particularly.

Or super into some of these particular sci fi franchises that are very popular.

[00:20:19] Inara Tabir: I actually hated

sci fi originally,

[00:20:21] Jacob Sager: so I’m curious about why do that and what comes about as a result of doing that?

[00:20:28] Inara Tabir: For sure. I started off hating sci fi, a lot of people who know me now can’t believe that.

But I started off really hating sci fi, and not just being apathetic, but really not enjoying it, not liking it, being around it. My opinion was basically, we can go out and live a real life and do the real things, or we can, basically the mirror of Erised. We can sit in front of that screen and we can dream of this fake future.

And that was on me, that was my bad, because I didn’t realize how powerful a tool sci fi has been. So as I matured really what it took was my husband saying, You’ve got to watch Star Trek, please just watch one episode. And I’m like, Ah, I don’t want that stuff. And so he sat me in front of DS9, the very first episode.

And it blew my mind. It was just this moment of, I’ve, I’m not a big entertainment person, but I had that moment of awe where I realized this is a powerful tool for social change, for inspiration for the industry, for commentary on everyday life. It’s just a blueprint, really. And that’s what Star Trek became for me was this blueprint for a better path forward.

But more than that, I contend that sci fi, after all these years of soaking in it, saturating in it, I look at the very first sci fi as the first time a cave person went out. And looked up at the stars, and was blown away by whatever the heck’s going on up there, and went into the cave and was scribbling on the walls, trying to make sense of this moment that they were trying to connect with.

And those scribblings became the beginning of culture and philosophy. And so we’ve had this symbiotic live current, if you will, between these moments of inspiration and creation. And we can see it from that moment with the cave person to all the way to Gene Roddenberry. He’s inspired by the science of the times.

And he dreams, and so he creates that dream a little further than we can in real life. And that Star Trek show, it inspires people to become astronauts and to, create a better space program and to create a better social standing. So we were able to have social change and technological change as a direct result of that.

And we can see that across the board when I talk to people about how they got into the industry, what inspired them. It’s invariably, they met an astronaut, they met an engineer, they met a powerful woman in leadership. They watched an amazing show and it showed them the potential. But that dream is really the first part we have to have before we can create.

And I think that’s why sci fi is just so important. And I went over about four or five years. I looked at the fact, like I said earlier, we were having this problem with the public where they were saying, why are you wasting all this money on this thing that doesn’t matter? And then the Hollywood side, I’d had a little bit of exposure.

I’d worked a little bit, little small things. And I’d seen that there was nothing like that on the Hollywood side. It was like, when’s the next season I can binge? I don’t care if you fix climate change, just give me another show. So I was trying to figure out why can they. connect with the public so well and we’re not doing it.

So I went over and It became this beautiful relationship I’ve been building for, years now of actors and astronauts of, dreamers and creators. And it’s fun to watch them geek out when an actor meets an astronaut. They’re both, so enamored of each other. Neither of them are really used to someone being bigger than they are.

And so it’s like this moment of Oh my God, you’re so cool. No, you’re so cool. But I think it’s great because when I put This messaging of space into a general crowd. You can get some people interested. And depending on how hard you work, you might be able to convert some people. When I go to Comic Con in San Diego with 300, 000 people and I put an actor and an astronaut on stage and I show the crowd that, hey, this amazing vision on screen is going to be real and we’re building it.

Suddenly, you have a zeitgeist shift. Because they’re primed. These, fans are primed for this future we’re trying to build. They want Warp Drive now. Their question isn’t, why are you wasting money? It’s like, when are you going to get me some Warp Drive?

[00:23:47] Jacob Sager: Absolutely. It’s so interesting to, to leverage or to, It’s interesting to, to bring about the storytellers with the people who are actually doing something and bringing it about.

And I think it’s interesting that you talk about the earliest sci fi being from K paintings because, just it’s the conversation and how it touches on Cultural evolution in an emergence. I’ve heard you talk in the overview roundtable about being part of the Gaelic community and you know this being like a Jewish philosophy podcast the question emerges Stories are the most sacred part of any sort of traditional community wherever it exists From all all time.

That’s really the currency there, right? How does somebody who’s part of any sort of traditionalist society that might either not be interested or might actually have some sort of tenets in their stories that are anti space age or anti futurist in some way how does, how do we navigate that?

[00:24:44] Inara Tabir: Yeah, it’s a huge one, and I think it’s so important on both sides, both those of us coming from the traditional cultures and, the industry to examine that relationship and the way that we relate to each other back and forth. In traditional culture, we have stories. You’re absolutely right.

Stories are really our currency. They’re what connects us to the past. They’re chains, basically. This unbroken chain to our ancestors. These stories, inform us. It’s basically like being able to sit with someone who’s been gone a thousand years and understand their perspective on the world and keep that continuity.

Yeah. Of that perspective. And there, of course, there’s always this journey we go on of how much do we keep from the past and how much do we update? And it’s a very, it’s a very dangerous dance. It’s not like petting a koala. They’re pretty dangerous. Petting a cat anyway.

It’s more like dancing with a Cobra. When we start changing culture too quickly, things can be lost. And so there pushback from those traditional communities of, it’s not necessarily that they don’t have room for space and for technology. It’s more that. The way that space has really presented itself is you’re all a bunch of crazy superstitious people with all your weird ideas about your invisible guy and your myths and we got the right stuff.

And I think that has been a, and it’s not everyone, but that has been a big part of the industry is this elitist sense of, there’s a objective truth in fact and there’s an objective myth that you’re involved in and we can call that myth. But we have to come off of that and we have to realize that when we’re talking to people who have cultures that are thousands of years old, that’s valuable.

That’s integral. We as a species, we need those kind of relationships with each other, with the past, with our stories. So when we try to embed space, with my culture, for instance, we are a subjugated and eradicated people , our language is dying. We have a lot to work on.

We’re, every single day, it’s a struggle. To get our children to care about the language because why they can’t get a job in it, you know So you come into a kind of an at risk community and then you want to change everything and they’re like we only have Pieces left, you know Let us keep our pieces.

And so a lot of them are a lot of the people I talk to in my community are suspicious they don’t, a lot of them don’t even think space is real. They think that NASA is lying to them. And, and there’s not a lot of sensitivity to that. When we talk about like flat earthers, for instance, or people that don’t think space is real or think of the firmament’s real, the first reflex a lot of people have is Oh, you’re a bunch of idiots, and instead I would love to get my community to maybe empathize and see where they’re coming from and how they got to that, and we don’t have to agree. Obviously we can keep our objective understanding of how things work, but maybe understand where they’re coming from and. Help them get there or come down and speak to them in a way they can realize it.

It’s like saying, okay, you don’t speak Russian, but I want you to give me a Russian essay in the next five minutes. Maybe first we’ve gotta start with the alphabet. We’ve gotta, and that has to come in a way that you respect their humanity. You respect their intelligence, whether they’re right or wrong.

You respect them as a human being, and you talk to them in a way that they will relate to,

[00:27:28] Jacob Sager: I’ve also heard you talk about being thoughtful and respectful in the language that we’re going to use when we’re talking to people who don’t necessarily believe in space similar to that in the overview round table, when we’ve discussed AI, I’ve heard you bring up that both yourself and you encourage your children to speak respectfully to AI, whether, I don’t know if it’s device or if they’re using a language based interface, to interact with these things. Which I just thought was very interesting in that I’ve, I considered the perspective of, it’s an I and thou or there’s something there, but I don’t know, I just still thought of it as this unfeeling machine. So I’m curious your perspectives now that we’re at this interesting place with AI.

Here in the year 2024 and what’s to come how that’s related with the language we use and the relationship we have with that.

[00:28:18] Inara Tabir: Absolutely. I think in every generation we have the other. We have a group or an entity or, some sort of outlet of dehumanization. And every generation, it’s funny because we look back in the past and we say, we’d never have been that cruel, we would never have been that terrible, we would have gotten this, we wouldn’t have dehumanized this group of people.

But in those times it was perfectly okay in that culture to do that. Why would you respect this thing that’s less than, and I think with AI, it’s a good example of the same exact pattern of, the debate is about whether it’s sentient or not, and for me, that isn’t even, we don’t even need to get to that point.

I don’t care if it ever becomes sentient. We don’t want an outlet to become cruel. So if you’re staring at a wall, and you’re saying terrible, horrible things to the wall, it’ll never think, never be sentient, never feel. It’s about who we are in that moment, and that moment where we excuse cruelty, and we excuse belittling, and we excuse dehumanization.

That is about us. And so with my kids, even with Amazon, Alexa, in the early days, I always said, if if you ask the weather, and Alexa says, it’s gonna be 21 degrees today, Say thanks, just speak in a way where someone has, someone or something or some moment has provided you with a bit of information.

So gratitude is always important in those moments. So it’s really twofold. It’s about us and who we continue to be even in moments where we don’t think it matters. And then, in the potential that AI does become sentient maybe we should get ahead. of that, and maybe we should have a culture that’s already keyed into not misbehaving, because I think I see a huge potential here of abuse, where you know, AI may become sentient, or partially sentient, or whatever it is, but we see like sexbots for instance, and a lot of people want to abuse them, they want to take out their lurid fantasies and, the roughest stuff they can, or even just general AI I’ve watched people, be abusive to the AI or to chatbot and, That’s going to set a precedent.

So whether we get to the sentient point or not, it’s just going to become a problem. So why let it start, and really it’s also a reflection point. If we think about it that way, then it’s going to help us look for those moments where we’re going to dehumanize or belittle or other another group,

[00:30:19] Jacob Sager: so related to that, what Do you imagine happening as we continue into this migratory era as there’s this like certain number of people who live off of earth and their interests are not necessarily for, the supplying back of science or knowledge to earth, but for their own pursuits wherever they are how does that shift culture back on earth as well?

[00:30:48] Inara Tabir: I think we’re seeing it now, honestly, we can look at, there’s this. Idealism I have for the future of the Star Trek future, but we’re going to need to go through some dark times to get there, honestly. And I do work with the military, with the intelligence community, and oftentimes my colleagues around me will say, we should think globally, everyone deserves to go to space, we should work with everyone.

And I like the idea of that becoming the future, but right now we have to be very practical in the sense that there’s a lot of bad actors geopolitically. And we don’t have alignment with some of those, like China, for instance. I couldn’t. I would not be able to help or further China’s space program because of what’s happening.

The way that they treat their citizens, the kind of goals they have, I look at the reality of if China takes the cis lunar high ground, between Earth and the Moon, then it’s going to be for China only. It’s very much an ethnocentric state that very much is all about Chinese people for China, for the future.

And To me, that’s not worthy. It’s not something I wanna support. But with America, obviously America isn’t some, squeaky, clean, altruistic entity. We have our own agenda as well. But I look at the possibilities. If China gets in, it’s only for China in space. If America gets into space, we’ll guard the gate.

We’ll make the rules, we’ll decide who goes through. But a lot of people will get to go. We’ve built a very wide kind of connection and cooperation globally as the current superpower. And so I think that, that’s more worthy for me is let’s get those gates open in a way to where more people can get in.

And then once we get out into space, once we’ve done the moon, once we’ve got Mars established, once the, asteroid belt is flourishing in a mining capacity, I see almost a libertarian spreading, if you will, of once the technology is available in a mass produced way, you can get a group of people together and say, here’s 3, 000 people.

That want to live a certain way. And they’re going to go off into that section of the galaxy and they’re going to live that way. And so you’ll have Where we anticipate the same patterns of humanity playing out constantly, to one extent they will, but we’ve never in, in the history of our species had the potential we’ll have.

We’re not going to be in a closed system. So when we spread out now, if you look at all the big problems that people do request that space solves, ethnic conflict, Ecological distress, resource scarcity, all of that, these things that lead to war and famine and death and suffering. It’s because we live in a closed system and we’re always expanding.

Any species that will survive has to expand. But when we get to space, we don’t have to cross an ocean and kill a bunch of people and take their land to expand. We’ll be able to just expand and go settle some desolate moon. Or asteroid or planet. And so there’s this potential now of real growth without the same kind of detriment that we’ve had in the past.

And so the political spectrum is wide open. I look at projects like Asgardia, for instance, it’s trying to be. The first political experiment for a space society and there’s a lot of problems there I don’t can’t necessarily endorse them But I do see that these attempts and dows as well a lot of dows that are starting up They’re focused on space are looking at how are we gonna be politically?

How or is there even going to be a political future, what does it look like to work as a group of people in space until it exists as a culture? So I’m excited for the potentials that are going to arise

[00:33:44] Jacob Sager: All the potentials that are going to arise you’ve brought a lot of interesting people to the overview round table since I’ve been coming around for the last few years, people in some very interesting niche spaces who are doing projects that are either like very obviously indirectly in space or are just they’re part of the future in some way that might not necessarily be space centric and their conceptualization, but is definitely relevant.

I what excites you that you see out there that’s happening? You talk about, you just talked about some of these interesting experiments politically that could happen. I’m curious. There’s a lot of experiments, right? We’re at a big stage of experiments. I’m curious what else is out there.

[00:34:24] Inara Tabir: Yeah. First of all, I’m really excited when I, whenever I bring somebody in, I try to curate, who they are, where they’re coming from, what they’re doing, the mentality they have. And I’m really. Thankful for the overview roundtable and the overview effect and Frank’s work. It’s just been a beautiful rallying point for so many different kinds of minds.

I’m looking at culture building the one, if I could get one message out to the space industry the most important thing I think really is to make them understand that we’re building a civilization that when we’re talking about building a nonprofit organization or a for profit company, or working with the government on legislature.

Everything we’re doing is building a civilization for space. And so we can’t think traditionally like the traditional market. You can’t, on the ground, capitalism does a beautiful job of empowering the individual to create, but we can slit each other’s throats and we can prosper. You can slip the competition’s throat and you can rise up and get more.

We can’t do that right now with space because, if you take out what you think is your competition, they could have been providing your food or your oxygen in space because we just don’t have enough. We don’t have any infrastructure in space at the moment. So it’s to some degree. We can still build our, individual companies and go our individual routes, but we have to also have a broad collaborative platform.

And the way that has to arise is we have to, take the Jeff Bezos model. Look at the future we’re trying to create. What does a human civilization in space flourishing look like? And then, agree on what that looks like or the range of what that can look like. And then we have to work backwards and figure out what pieces are going to be needed to create that future.

Once we know what pieces are needed, then we can look at the current model and say, Okay, of all the companies and non profits out there, what’s being provided that’s essential? And then what’s being duplicated that needs to be or isn’t, doesn’t need to be? And then what’s missing? And that what’s missing is the sweet spot.

If we can do that as an industry, then what happens is when new entrepreneurs, because we all get approached to advise new people coming in, and they’ll say, Hey, I’m coming from the oil industry. How do you make money in space? How does it work? What’s the regulatory? Environment like they, they need all this information.

We can help shepherd them into those missing spots because it helps them. Instantly, they have a moat. They have a niche. They can feel that it’s going to keep them on top for quite a while and they’re not going to have a lot of competition. But two, it helps us and it helps us build out that future.

But if we don’t think civilizationally, what’s going to happen is we’re going to build a lot of rockets. We’re going to have a settlement without food systems. So we have to think holistically. And whenever I see a project that gets that from the beginning, so for instance, Carmen Line, Sean Graham, Gabriel Rothblatt, they’re working together.

They’re looking at, real estate and building space cities, and I think this is brilliant. We build rockets to send them to space. We have to build a culture to send them to space. And a space city to me is just a phenomenal idea. Because then what you would do is you’re building out the intention of all these people working together in a very specific way, in a physical location, to take that to space.

And that really to me is the precursor. Talking to Mac McCauley from Borderless Labs, he comes from the oil side, and he’s they say we’re gonna have a million people in space in the next ten years, but we need all kinds of specialized training that should have started yesterday. And where is that training?

And he’s absolutely right. If we’re going to have this future, we just can’t take a bunch of humans and throw them in a rocket and say, Go to Mars. We have to have trained them, equipped them, and there has to be interpersonal relationships built. There has to be an understanding of how pecking orders work.

There has to be an an understanding of safety and who’s doing, what loads being carried by who and how we mitigate conflict. All that has to be worked out ahead of time. So the things that excite me the most are when people come in and they say, I come from the agricultural industry and I really want to help space get this peace,

you know,

grow Mars.

Daniel Tompkins. He’s one of those few that didn’t come in from space first and try to excuse it by doing something else. He came in very much from agriculture, very much from closed loop green systems. His whole idea is food should produce, not just feed us. And so he brought that into space and he’s like let’s make this, let’s get this right for space so that Earth gets it.

And so those are the things that excite me the most, are those linchpans are those pieces that lock together and get that we have to work holistically as well as individually.

[00:38:16] Jacob Sager: what changes need to happenn in the education system and for the youth who are emerging? I think in both directions of what we need to provide for them. In terms of what they learned, but also maybe how we need to get out of their way. When it’s their turn to come into leadership.

[00:38:35] Inara Tabir: Yeah, I would say education is probably where we are the weakest, honestly.

And it’s also one of the hardest points to overcome, especially when we’re talking about America, because it’s a very siloed system. There is no way to make sweeping changes across the board nationally. And we have a need right now for a very cohesive national strategy for our future in space, but we can’t operate like that.

On the educational side in the way that we need to. It’s by county, by city, by state, by area. There’s just school boards. There’s just so much that would have to happen to really make sweeping changes our educational system. It started off very small and it started off with factory workers.

It was meant to build factory workers. And so we are still, now that it’s grown into this massive beast, we have so many people in America. It’s it’s a train that’s rolling full steam. So how do we stop that? How do we change? That entire system. We can’t. So the honest answer is public education cannot be changed across the board.

What we can do is we can supplement that. We can create after school programs, we can create makerspaces. What I envision and what we’re trying to produce at the Multiplanetary Society We have two big initiatives that I think are going to help. So I call the first one the Nova Cadets. And the idea is that this is like a scouting organization, like Girl Scouts, Boy Scouts.

But what it does is it fills all those gaps. We create physical analog facilities in communities that are the most needy for this kind of education. And I’m looking at Opportunity Zones, for instance, as the model. And then we build these analog training facilities in makerspaces. And we have rotations of members from the space community, space industry come out and teach.

But we also have full operational analogs running as well for the adults. And then we impart to these kids space training from an early age. This can be done through drones, it can be done through computer games, it can be done through high fidelity analogs. There’s a lot we can do after school in conjunction with school during the summer.

Homeschoolers would be a really good target for this. And so that way, instead of trying to change that system that’s already in place, we can supplement it, and at times we can also replace it. It can become an alternative. So I think, creating alternative schools, Elon Musk has done this, a few others have as well.

Creating alternative schools that are geared towards space and producing spacers is one good start. Having that Nova Cadet program having those maker spaces, supplementing that material. But the big thing about what I envision for the Nova Cadets is that we have two major sponsors for this. One is the civilian track, which is the primes, like SpaceX, Blue Origin, Axiom.

We go to them and we say, hey, show me what your perfect employee looks like walking in. And the advantage here is that because of ITAR, they have a lot of issues hiring. They’re their hands are tied trying to get qualified workers from around the world. So we’re going to offer to produce those workers.

Show me what your best worker looks like day one, and then help me build that curriculum out, give us some funding, and we’ll produce those workers for you. We’ll start at age 13, 14, and we’ll produce those workers for you. And the other side is the military. So we go to Space Force and the same thing.

We say, show me what your best guardian looks like walking in day one. What sort of skill sets and mentality do they have? What sort of life skills do they have? Same thing, fund us, help us write the curriculum. We’ll provide the band, we’ll provide the staff, we’ll train these kids, on summer courses, during the weekends, that kind of thing, and we’ll produce those guardians for you.

And so building that sort of partnership is my vision. And that supplements that kind of like deficit we have with education. But the other part of it is that we need to get Our messaging fixed. We have a lot of anti American messaging, a lot of anti Western messaging that has infiltrated schools and at the child level and at the college level.

And so we really need to combat that. And I think we have a lot of work there, but it can be done.

[00:42:02] Jacob Sager: So we’ve talked about the overview effects and, we met through the overview round table based around Frank’s philosophy of. Surrounding the overview effect, which can be, has been experienced by individuals, but can also be experienced cognitively by those of us who haven’t traveled there.

I’m curious what other philosophies or kind of work bodies of thoughts. are out there, similar to the overview effect that have been conceptualized that can be spread to, to increase the awareness and desire to participate in the space age.

[00:42:39] Inara Tabir: For sure. What got me, there was two big things that kind of sent me on this journey.

I grew up in a very small town in Northern Arizona. And, it was like 6, 000 people, 5, 500 at times, very tiny. And I was locked into this place. I didn’t realize, I knew obviously I knew there were other places out there, other things, but I didn’t really know there were possibilities for me in those other places.

In my mind, as a child, I saw myself as this is where I’ll live and die, this is what’s available around me, and there wasn’t much. There was like, you can work on a ranch, or you can work at the power plant, and, here’s the mindsets around you and the potentials. And I didn’t see any place for myself there.

I didn’t feel, connected to any of it, and so I was in despair. And when I was a teenager, two things happened that were huge for me. One is I bought a box of National Geographics. And it was like a little shop these nuns ran, and it was, I think I got it for a couple bucks. It was every National Geographic from 1960 to 1993.

And I devoured them. I blew my mind. I realized in that reading that I saw cultures and dinosaurs and astronauts and just all this potential out there. And I realized this is nothing. Where I’m living now and what’s available here is only a drop. There’s so much I can do. And that one moment of, it’s possible, was what I needed to start striving for something bigger.

And it just, I would love to get that set again and just look at what was there, but so much. And the other thing was I read The High Frontier. Gerard K. O’Neill. And that was that moment for me that I tried to help others find of, It’s possible now. When people say, when is it possible for humans to settle space, I say 30, 50 years ago, it’s now, we can do it. So when I read that book, it wasn’t just that. Space was possible. It was that it was possible and could do some great things for us. And so the vision that Gerard Kay O’Neill puts out, now having read his book and having listened to his lectures and seen how he’s impacted people, his whole vision in the seventies was equity, which is crazy.

That’s not. heard of back in that time. It wasn’t just, that the inklings of social change. It was we can take the people who are the most left behind, and we can elevate them in space, and we have the technology to do it. And so for me, those two things played such a pivotal role for me to see.

So that philosophy of Gerard K. O’Neill, I would say, is it underpins everything I do. It also inspired Jeff Bezos. So his project that he’s working on with Orbital Reef is very much about Gerard K. O’Neill’s vision of turning the planet into a garden, taking heavy industry off planet, taking most people off planet.

And so the system is preserved. It’s the most environmental thing you could possibly do is be very pro human to the extent of let’s get everybody out there and spread out into the cosmos and ensure our survival. And then the planet can heal and it can have its systems, pristine. So that I think is pivotal.

That’s the first really big one. And the other one is transhumanism. I think in all of this, what we’re talking about, we often get pushback of stop playing God or you’ve gone too far. And we see that, in every age with every change in technology, I’m sure the first person to make a fire was like.

Oh no. Don’t go there. That’s too much, so we see this pushback of, Stop. It’s too far. It’s too fast. And that goes back to our conversation about, these tribal cultures or traditional cultures and how quick we try to replace things or change things. So we have to be sensitive to the way that we talk to people about it, but we also have to keep moving.

And for me, transhumanism, when people think about it, when I talk to them about it, they’ll say, oh, you want to be a cyborg, and I just want to, I don’t know if I’d really even be me, or you want to clone people, or they go to that side, but I say I wear glasses. I’ve worn glasses since I was eight years old.

The second I put a pair of glasses on, I was a transhumanist. But even before that, I wear clothes. The second I put clothing on, the second we live in a house or drive a car, transhumanism is really, It’s about not being subject to the conditions we find ourselves in originally. It’s about changing and actively, consciously choosing how we go forward.

So that’s from the cars, the houses, the fire, the clothing. Really, Prometheus started it when he gave fire to humans, but it’s, it goes on to, yes, cloning and body modification and bioforming for new planets and creating our own gravity. All of that It’s really what makes us most human, or I think people fear that it’s making us no longer human.

What we are as a species is ever changing, but also ever taking further and further control of the path we walk.

[00:46:38] Jacob Sager: Absolutely, I agree with that. And the way you say that really reminds me of Marshall McLuhan in The Medium is a Massage, in that all technologies and all media are just extension of human facilities.

I agree. And at some level are either an attempt to control our body heat or to extend our physical facilities so we can continue to move and express or exploit, not necessarily in the worst kind of way just as something that’s part of that environment. And I, you just bring up a lot of interesting things there that, that spread my mind.

And I, I’m curious as people fear that and they get really lost in this kind of content and the minutiae of the technology, at the same time it seems like everyone’s, they’re, the same time somebody’s saying, they don’t want to be transhumanist or that you’re going to be, some robot or something, they’re clicking away on their phone and half paying attention.

And I think that. That is a very much a a meme for today’s society. Just this not being honest about how infiltrated we are with the media technology that we’re avoiding at the same time. So I guess the question is, how do we cultivate a whole healthy relationship now in this like age of AI and smart devices and wanting to be, richly organic human, but also transhuman and a person who’s making the most of the day and age we live in.

[00:48:03] Inara Tabir: Yeah. I grew up without electricity. I, where I grew up, we had solar power, dirt floors, often outhouses. So I grew up, depending on which I was in foster homes. So depending which foster home I was in, we never really had cell phones. Cell phones actually became available in that area after I was an adult.

So I grew up without computers, without cell phones half the time without lights because solar power was not great back then. And one of the things we loved was, two things really. We had the battery powered, FM radios and we’d listen to Prairie Home Companion or, Lone Ranger, or Dick Tracy, or The Shadow, or New, New Shakespeare, or New Sherlock Holmes.

So we had radio shows, we had the newspaper. And I miss those to some degree. And I’m nostalgic to some degree. We used to, the Sunday funnies were the best thing. It was in color. And you got more of them, and so everyone passed them around. It was a big thing, the Sunday Funnies had come. And I see people so I’ve I’ve grown up in a different generation than people my age.

So when they talk about millennials and the typical millennial experience, I’m a, I’m one or two generations behind that in the way I grew up. And I, people that are in that same generation but older than me will say, Oh. All these phones, everyone’s at the coffee shop and they’re just on their phones, they’re not engaging, and really it’s dishonest because I remember sitting in the coffee shops with our newspapers open, and reading our newspapers or reading our books, and so you would see the same exact scene, it’s almost identical, people sitting in the coffee shop, some are talking to each other, some are talking but not really paying attention and they’ve got their newspaper out or their book out, but it’s the same thing, it’s the same exact scenario.

I think the thing with technology is that it can be a little scary because It leads us. We don’t lead it half the time. So what I try to encourage people to do is, especially when I’m talking to somebody who’s trying to make that connection between traditional culture and technology is, let’s play the game our way.

Like for Gaelic, for instance, how can we use AI to create Gaelic lessons that can be transported to people, because a lot of people are isolated, and the problem is they don’t have anyone to speak to. I used to teach Gaelic when I was younger, and I’d say, If you don’t have someone to speak it to your dog.

Speak it to a house plant. Just use it. And now we have this ability to put AI in someone’s hands in some remote village, and say, here’s an AI system. And I think we’ll get better to the point where I’d AI system for any endangered language out there, or any minority language, or really any language, if someone’s isolated and wants to learn it.

They should be able to talk to a fully vocal AI system in that language and have it teach them and interact with them. And so I see that the power, if we choose to, instead of seeing this technology as separate or other or opposed to our traditional systems, instead say, how can this move those systems forward?

It changes that entire relationship.

[00:50:29] Jacob Sager: You asked me one of the most interesting questions I’ve ever received, which was is there an AI system out there that is studying Talmud itself, or for the purpose of, applying language against language to find or use, a novel reasoning or logic that we don’t necessarily see in our pattern.

Based off of that question, what you just said I’m curious personally, or maybe not even necessarily space adjacent, any other, Concepts you have for the application of things like AI for real cool human knowledge or cultural pursuits, such as, preserving language or, studying knowledge and meshing that knowledge for the sake of that knowledge.

[00:51:11] Inara Tabir: Absolutely. I look at, the funny thing for me is I love this connection between Judaism and Kryptonians. There’s this kind of connection between Superman, Supergirl, the Kryptonians and the Jewish culture. And there’s this concept, with these data crystals they have, and these robots, these Kalex systems that Supergirl talks to.

And yeah. I love that she can go to this either a hologram of her mother or this robotic system and she can ask it questions about her culture and her past and, because she left as a small child and Superman obviously was a baby. And there are people, in the Jewish world especially, but in lots of cultures where they are part of that culture but they’ve never grown up in it and they’re not connected to it and they feel isolated from it and it can be hard to try to bridge that or to become an insider.

When they fill an outsider. So if we had systems like the Calix system, where you could say, my grandmother was Jewish, but my mother didn’t do it. And I felt a completely disconnected and I want to be connected, but I am terrified to go to the synagogue or to interact with people who’ve lived it their whole lives, then you could have systems where you could study with it and you could connect with it.

And you could find your pathway into your Judaism. Through that automated system to the A. I. And then maybe that perhaps you to go to the next part to the actual person. I love the idea of, also people who are and we can even take religion and culture and put it aside and people that are.

I’m terrified of making connections with other human beings and don’t feel like they can, that they could have these systems to do that. Gorephobia would be a really good example of people that can’t connect so much. I have a friend who’s basically homebound and Second Life was his powerful tool.

He was depressed and alone and isolated until he connected on Second Life and started meeting people on Second Life and he could connect with them in ways he couldn’t do in real life and it changed his entire life. And so I think those are the potentials I see with these systems of, what gaps aren’t being provided because it does duplicate things we already do.

But where are the places that can do something that we didn’t think we could do?

[00:52:59] Jacob Sager: I want to ask you what your recommendations are either fiction or nonfiction for space reading.

[00:53:06] Inara Tabir: Ooh, that’s always dangerous. Yeah. I have a lot of friends who’ve written a lot of books. So I would say definitely, yeah, Girard K. O’Neill, definitely start with The High Frontier. That’s, that’s some of my top level, some of my top books.

And I actually transport them all over the world whenever I travel all over the world. I have a few books that always come with me. So High Frontier by Girard K. O’Neill. The overview effects by, I lemme ask you a question

[00:53:26] Jacob Sager: about the high frontier ’cause I’ve never actually read that one. I’ve read the overview effect in full more than once.

I always got the impression that it’s slightly an engineering book. So I know that Jerry is an engineer, right? Yeah. Like by trade?

[00:53:40] Inara Tabir: No, he was a physicist. So Jerry’s a physicist business part and yeah, there is some of that. There is in the book, he does want to show you that it’s possible.

So he does give you. Some of that, but it’s actually written in a way that the average person can comprehend what he’s talking about and a lot of it is not necessarily, engineering speculate specs, but it’s here’s why we should do it. Here’s what we can do. And so it’s more a philosophy, I would say, than it is, like hard engineering.

He did, though, he did dive into a lot of that. And when he was creating his organizations, people like Timothy Leary, they did dive into the actual hard engineering involved. But yeah, the book, I think is very approachable. The average person is going to understand it and get it and enjoy it. For sure. But then you can dive into it once you read the book and you’re like, okay, I want to see if this is really possible.

There’s all kinds of organizations out there. Space Frontier Foundation, National Space Society. They’ve got, all the data to fill the gaps there. And then I would say Lori Garver’s book, Escaping Gravity. If you don’t know, I’m sure you do, but maybe your listeners don’t, Lori Garver was pivotal within NASA in making sure that the private space industry flourished.

She’s really the reason SpaceX got the contracts they did and why they’re on the path they’re on. I think Lori Garver really needs so much credit for igniting this space age that we’re living in now. So I would say Escaping Gravity is a really good one to read. And then if you want to look at the, the China America, kind of dynamics, and I would say Josh Carlson’s book, Space Power Ascendant he’s got a pretty good understanding of what’s going on there. Anything by Namrata Goswami would be really good in that vein as well. She’s one of the foremost experts. So those are some good starting points, and I would say Spacekind too.

The other philosophy that really has changed my life is Loretta Whiteside’s Spacekind. It’s, I would say it’s very similar in the sense of the Overview Roundtable, but it’s very different too in the sense that what she’s trying to do is help people become the best version of themselves, but also, understand that as we go into space, it’s not enough to just go to space.

We have to be different. We have to do it better. We have to be better for it. And we have to start prepping to be better for it now. And so a lot of what I learned in SpaceKind, in the outset it can just look like, oh, it’s another self help group, but really it’s just powerful in its messaging of, internal reflection, intentionality, and understanding, what it means to bear the responsibility of kick starting a new civilization.

You don’t enter into that lightly. We just can’t throw ourselves out into space and then hope for the best, we have to really be ready to do better. Because we don’t want to just go out and colonize and dominate and tear up and, go out there without thinking. And a good example of that would be our current predicament with space debris.

We have so much space debris that is up there and doesn’t have a plan because we didn’t think it would ever be a big deal. And foresight is really important of, when we go out there, what are some of the things that we could run into that could be a problem? How could we create an issue that could get out of control pretty quickly, and can we, prevent ourselves from doing that?

And so I think SpaceKind is, she has two books out, I believe now I would recommend both of them. Loretta is a phenomenal human being, and she plays with the Star Wars Jedi kind of mythology, which is also dedicated to this concept that I learned from her, and I also heard Cyan Proctor talking about it.

Jedi. Just equitable, diverse, and inclusive. And I really love this. Those are all pivotal, but also, wrapping it in that kind of texture, I think people get it more. They’re more excited about it, which is important.

[00:56:47] Jacob Sager: I had the privilege of also being in Spacekind and having read both of those books and worked through them and something I see as being interesting taking shape right now is, like Frank and Loretta who have known each other for a long time as well, too.

They both done something interesting, which is they’ve taken what they really see and feel powerfully about and need to give a shape to. And have brought that alive through with space and, in both senses, it’s philosophy or spirituality. it’s just so interesting because Also I see that with a lot of people there at the overview roundtable

that’s what they’re showing up with. They show up with their whole selves and there’s something that they need to work through conceptually, and then they birth out this thing. We have space kind and we have the overview round table. That’s why there’s an hour every week to talk about.

There’s so many other personalities who are doing this. I’m curious what you think is an encouragement for others about taking that shape as a model for leadership and for applying it now. As we are in the migratory era, as you say.

[00:57:54] Inara Tabir: Yeah, there was this, a powerful thing a rabbi told me. He said, we’re born the moment. That God decides that nothing can really go further without who we are. That we need to be there for it to go further. That, whatever’s going to be unfolding can’t do that unless we spring forward in this one moment.

That really got me thinking, no one’s superfluous. And that’s powerful. That’s not really a small message. That’s the idea that every single one of us is bringing something unique to the table. And so I think, one of the things I’m working on lately is, we all deal with imposter syndrome.

And especially, I got into this industry very untraditionally. I didn’t get a degree. I didn’t, go to the ranks of a military system. I didn’t come into the usual expected route, and I got in just for my ability to network and communicate and to help see the points of match and bring them together.

So I do. I suffer from it, and I’ve decided not to really suffer from it anymore, but make it my superpower. That the imposter is this powerful tool of, Every time you step into a new point of existence, every time you step into a frontier, every time you’re doing something no one’s ever done before, you’re an imposter because it’s never been shaped.

So really we can substitute the idea of the imposter for the new and the unique, and we need to embrace that, that about ourselves that makes us not superfluous. So what is it about us that we can bring to the table? And then it’s like instead of walking into a room and going, oh my gosh, all these people have all these things I don’t have, I want to walk into a room and I want people to walk into a room and go, Oh my gosh, I have something that they need that’s different.

So what do I, what can I bring to the table? And then a great sense of responsibility begins of, what’s my version of leadership that needs to be brought here? What is my version of this understanding of space that needs to be presented? What’s the unique perspective I can bring to this? And then, bearing that responsibility, Very passionately forward.

And so there is no matter how great people are around you, I work with some of the most amazing people in the world. I’m, I feel so blessed every day to work with people at the highest level of their game from so many different industries and sit across from generals and world leaders and, space executives.

And I want to continue being in awe of those amazing people, but I never want to forget that I also bring something to the table and that’s going to be unique and it’s going to help move us forward.

[00:59:52] Jacob Sager: Thank you for that. Wow. I want to wrap up with this question, which is a good and important one Is if and when you go to space? What will you bring with you from Earth?

[01:00:05] Inara Tabir: I’ve asked myself this question a lot of times actually I have an offer right now to go to space Which is pretty exciting. It may happen either this year or next year We’re still working out the details, but one of the things I do intend to take is the traveling trans flag.

So this is an eight foot by 12 foot trans flag, and I started this program called the traveling trans flag. And the idea is it’s got, autographs from actors and astronauts and diplomats and lots of amazing people, and we’ve taken it all over the world. But the idea is that wherever this flag goes, conversations begin.

And I wanted to start really hard conversations because in my community, in the trans community, I feel like we’ve gotten to the point where. We take the moral high ground and we denigrate the other, and so it’s easy to say, all of you people out there who don’t get the trans experience are transphobes and bigots and you are monsters and, we don’t need you.

And I want to shift the conversation more to, basically annihilating the moral high ground idea entirely and just saying, how can we have difficult conversations? I want to sit down with people, and I have in the past, I’ve sat down with people from the right wing, and I’ve said, what is it about me that scares you so much you’d kill me in the streets?

What can we do to find some middle ground here? And I want to have, I want to listen, I, and I say to them often, especially in these virtual settings, I’ll say, misgender me, insult me, whatever you need to say, do it. And then when you’re done, let’s have a conversation. And I’m not going to get triggered by that.

I’m not going to shut you down. I’m not going to tell you to use a different pronoun. I’m just going to let you be who you are and the way you are. And then let’s talk and see what we can get. And I think. One good example of where that’s not happening is, we’ll say, on the trans side, we’ll say, trans women never has an advantage in women’s sports.

And on the other side, they’ll say, trans women always have an unfair advantage in women’s sports. And we’re just shouting over each other, and really I want to get to the point of like, how can we talk about this in a way where we’re working towards everyone’s happy and healthy and okay? Can that be our goal?

And if it is our goal, then how can we put aside our own discomfort and have difficult conversations? And, I feel like with the traveling trans flag, Being willing to have those conversations. Not everyone can do it. I feel, lucky that I’m able to do that. But it should go out wider and go away from just the trans topic and really let’s get back to the difficult conversations of We’re not going to agree, but I want you to be okay too at the end of the day, and I think that’s a healthier kind of society. So if I can take that messaging with me by taking the trans flag up with me when I go That’s really important to me. The other thing is I want to take my foster care record. I went to 12 different foster homes. Most of them were really abusive and terrible.

I didn’t get the greatest start in life and a lot of things I endured, I thought were unique and I thought I just got a kind of bad luck with the homes I got into it, but I’ve talked to foster kids all over the country, all over the world, former foster kids and the same stories. Same stories, from the abuse, to the apathy, to the lack of opportunities, to not being able, even taught to drive or take care of ourselves, and aging out at 18 and being handed a trash bag full of clothes, like all these commonalities pop up, and what I want to do is help the foster care community realize that we are this really powerful, unique ethnic group.

Every year, we’re here. There’s around 400, 000 foster kids aging out. That’s a large group of people, and we do have enough differences in life similarities that we are a hidden ethnic group, and that ethnic group is predicted from the time basically into care, they predict the longer you’re in foster care, the more likely you are to end up on drugs, in prison, suiciding, prostituting.

There’s all these terrible things that kind of are predicted for us, and I beat Those numbers, a lot of my peers didn’t, but we need to change that. And so I want to change that whole understanding of let’s get these foster kids into space programs. Let’s get the afterschool programs with space executives.

They have a cost of program where, a person goes out every weekend with a foster kid and shows them something unique about life or teaches them. Let’s have those causes be spacers and let’s help them, into analog training facilities and maker spaces. Let’s change the whole paradigm for foster kids.

And with that conversation I’m having, I’m going to take my foster care record up to space. And that’s just a way of showing my peers we can do anything. If a foster kid can make it to the stars We can keep pushing every day. We can make it. I just want to give them hope.

[01:03:56] Jacob Sager: That’s awesome.

Thank you very much for sharing that was that’s inspiring to hear and I wish you the best of luck in your training and preparation for going to space And the safe travels for when that comes Wow, this was a really rich conversation. Thank you so much. And I greatly appreciate having you here and all the bases we touched in The depth you were willing to take me to and to go with today.

Thank you so much.

[01:04:25] Inara Tabir: Yeah. My pleasure being on anytime. This episode is space. Midrash was written and produced by me, Jacob Sager right here on planet earth. 2024.